Secrets of the chupacabra revealed

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - It's a mysterious vampire beast of mythical proportions right up there with the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman.

It's the chupacabra. Everyone knows the name, but no one knows where they live or what they look like. You see the legend of this vicious monster is as elusive as the beast itself.

"Among the monsters said to roam the world's desolate deserts and dense jungles, perhaps is none is more feared than the blood-thirsty chupacabra," Ben Radford said. "For some people it's a joke. To many people it's a very real creature."

Radford is a creature hunter of sorts. He's researched Bigfoot, lake monsters, aliens and ghosts. Now he's taking on chupacabra

Radford is managing editor of the science journal the Skeptical Enquirer. He is known internationally for his science-based investigations. Now, after a five year search, Radford has uncovered the secret of the chupacabra.

And it's not a story he heard as a child from his grandfather.

"My grandfather did not tell me that story," Radford said. "In fact he couldn't have because the chupacabra only dates back to 1995."

According to Radford, the entire chupacabra phenomenon--the monster, the books, documentaries, the whole legend--was created just 16 years ago from a single confused incident on a sun-drenched Caribbean island.

Mark your calendar; it was the second week of august, 1995."

"I can tell you exactly where the legend was born," Radford said. "It was born in the suburb of Canóvanas outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico. It all traced back to one woman named Madelyne Tolentino who saw this bizarre creature outside her house."

Canóvanas is a Puerto Rican community about the size of Farmington. During the week of Aug. 7, 1995, on a residential street, a housewife named Madelyn Tolentino spied something out of this world.

"She saw this weird thing," Radford continued. "It was about 3 to 5 feet high, it had spikes down the back, had either black or red eyes, sort of alien-like.

"She saw it for a few minutes, and it scattered off into the woods. And from that point the chupacabra was born."

The creature she described had three fingers, grayish skin and skipped like a kangaroo but had no tail. The local newspaper dubbed the beast, el chupacabra. Never mind, in 1995 there was no such thing as a monster called a chupacabra.

Back then, you see, the name referred to a nocturnal bird called a whippoorwill which some believe sucked milk out of goats. However, once the tabloids got a hold of Madelyn Tolentino's beast, there was no stopping the story of a blood-thirsty menace on a rampage.

Did Tolentino spot an alien critter that night? No one had reported seeing this creature before. But hold on. We have seen it before.

Tolentino's chupacabra bears an eerie resemblance to a Hollywood image. Meet Sil, the terrifying beast that ran amuck in the 1995 movie "Species."

Call it coincidence or call it the invention of a legend, but just weeks before she spotted a strange creature beside her driveway, Madelyn Tolentino admitted, she sat in a movie theater and watched the science-fiction blockbuster "Species."

Ben Radford interviewed Madelyn Tolentino.

"I think she genuinely believes that she saw this," Radford said. "I don't think she's a hoaxer. I don't think she's a liar. I think she simply confused a monster she saw in a film with real life."

Radford called Tolentino's story, dubious, nonsensical and contradictory.

Scary monster stories never really die, they just get, well, scarier. And that's certainly true in the case of chupacabra.

Even though the creature Tolentino described was never seen again, chupacabra hysteria has gone global.

"People write songs about the chupacabra," Radford said. "There are chupacabra figurines. There are chupacabra board games. There are people who spend their lives looking for the chupacabra."

Today you hear about chupacabra sightings all the time. When the carcass of a dead fish was found on Albuquerque's West Side, some speculated it was the blood-sucking monster.

"In the last 10 years chupacabra just means anything weird," Radford said. "It means some dead animal of some sort that we can't identify."

Find a diseased dog or coyote and you'll find someone who says its chupacabra. However, in every case, DNA tests show these strange dead creatures are just dead animals.

"The media had a very, very active role in promoting the chupacabra lore and still does to this day," Radford added. "Hardly a year goes by when someone doesn't find some dead dog somewhere in Texas and calls it the chupacabra. Until the tests come in."

Radford calls it the beast that never was. Yet the myth continues with Radford denying he's a bit of a spoiler.

"You have this creature that's so well-known all around the world, this vampire creature, and to be able to definitively solve it, to sort of encapsulate it and say this is all the elements to it, I think is more fascinating than the myth," he said.

Despite the evidence, there is